Source Gaming had the opportunity to chat with Team Cherry Co-Directors Ari Gibson and William Pellen to talk about the critically and acclaimed Hollow Knight to get some background on the teams thinking. It turns out that the initial plan for Hollow Knight was the create a “very small” Metroidvania and it wasn’t until the success of the Kickstarter that they realised they could go and expand and create the indie masterpiece we have now. The duo also said that they were debating lowering the Kickstarter goal just days before it went live as they weren’t sure if they were going to achieve it.
Okay, so switching gears a little bit here. With the Kickstarter, I believe you guys raised around like AU$58,000?
William: Yeah.
To us, that kind of seems like a pretty modest budget considering what the game achieved and how it’s grown. So whenever you set your initial goal, which was even lower than what you guys got, was that really a number you guys were comfortable with? In a“we can do everything we want now” kind of way?
Ari: Yeah, it was a number we were comfortable with for the scale of game that we intended to make at the time. So, the goal that we set was something like AU$35,000.
William: Yeah, we were debating it before the kickstarter. I think we changed it up from like AU$30,000 a few days before it went live. We were debating that for a while.
Ari: But that number was to create a Metroidvania that was very small. It was really like a small thing.
William: Like two hours or something.
Ari: And then the success of the campaign allowed us to make it a level bigger. And then because of funding that we got entirely from that campaign, it allowed us to work for a period of two years, essentially, and that allowed the game to get bigger again.
